The following relates generally to wireless communication and more specifically to timing advance reporting for latency reduction.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, or a New Radio (NR) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations or access network nodes, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
Wireless multiple-access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. An example telecommunication standard is LTE. LTE is designed to improve spectral efficiency, lower costs, improve services, make use of new spectrum, and better integrate with other open standards. LTE may use OFDMA on the downlink (DL), single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) on the uplink (UL), and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology.
A UE and a base station may communicate based on a timing delay between UL and DL transmissions. For example, an UL grant may be transmitted by a base station that grants the UE access to resources for UL transmission. The UE may then utilize the granted resources for an UL transmission after a time delay. In some cases, the time delay may be predetermined based on a maximum cell size supported by the base station. In other cases, the time delay may be based on a channel configuration or UE capabilities. If, however, the UE is well within the maximum cell size, the time delay may be more than sufficient for timing processing. Further, if the UE does not support or does not wish to communicate according to the capabilities used to determine the time delay, the time spent by the UE waiting for the time delay before transmitting an UL message may be wasted. This may cause inefficiencies through unneeded delay between UL and DL communications between the UE and the base station.